Guest post by Tiffany Chu, Continuum.

The leading theme of the Service Design Network Conference was, as could be expected, a push-and-pull struggle of how to define service design. While some seasoned veterans tweeted frustration, there were many others who pushed boundaries with fresh insights on what the role could become.

From an academic perspective, Shelley Evenson of Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon presented Design Expo, an annual program launched by Microsoft to challenge students to develop team projects centered around a design solution. Evenson presented a captivating project from the University of Washington, a digital, location-based neighborhood-building service, Open Door, that is best described with this video.

Robert Fabricant of frog design began with the premise that he doesn't yet have the best-formed strategy to deliver service, or why there is a gap in service design awareness. Instead, in presenting Project Masiluleke, a mobile service deployed for healthcare in emerging markets, he made an interesting point on behavioral chains and second-order feedback loops—how we need to judge success on the feedback that systems provide over time.

Overall, the conference was quite a smorgasbord of designers, business leaders, and academics that led to all of these new conversations, and we can't wait to see how the service design community will expand and evolve over the next year.